How Social Media could cover your business’ entire Brand Management.

By capitalising on your small business’ brand presence on social media you can effectively turn ‘likes’, ‘follows’ or ‘recommendations’ into increased sales, raising your profit margin. Customers are increasingly turning to social networking sites to research a brand and make purchasing decisions. This makes social media one of the most important tools for brand management. Putting yourself on a platform where people can praise and share your business is vital.

A study conducted by Internet Advertising Bureau UK reported that almost 80% of customers acknowledged that a brand’s presence on social media was a big motivation in them buying more often in the future. If you don’t have a solid social presence, you are literally missing customers.

Just having a presence on Social media channels helps as it increases trust in customers that you are a real business. It can be hard to know what to do with social media, and often something which starts with good intentions can be left to fritter away once the reality of posting regularly, and the busy schedule sets in. Set realistic goals; you don’t have to be on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and all the others. In fact, only focus on Facebook and Instagram – sure, you should have a presence on the others, but there’s no need to spend a large amount of time on them. There’s also really no justification for spending money on sponsored promotions on any platform except Facebook and Instagram – just stick to these two.

You will also know where your potential customers are likely to be and concentrate on those. As an aside, it could be worth looking into how Whatsapp could be integrated into communicating with your customers. It’s the fastest growing social media in its first four years and puts you right into people’s phones alongside their friends and family. Whatsapp isn’t an uncommonly used customer communication tool (be it Customer Service or Marketing) in Asia, so there’s a strong likelihood it’ll transfer business functions over here too.

Finally, use other sites for brand management which connect to social media. Recommendable is a great example of this – any recommendations your clients make on Recommendable will be automatically broadcast on social media for you. You get the benefit of having potential clients hear about you as well as storing all these word-of-mouth recommendations so over time they continue to bring in potential new clients. And because they are driven personal word-of-mouth recommendations, they are the best potential new clients you could get!